Pakistan ‘categorically rejects’ India’s remarks on GB elections as ‘baseless’
Why this matters: local context for readers following news across Pakistan and the region.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday “categorically rejected” India’s remarks regarding upcoming elections in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), calling them “baseless” and part of a “carefully choreographed attempt to conflate fact with fiction”. General elections in GB are scheduled for Sunday (June 7), after a four-month delay attributed to harsh winter weather. The PPP and other political parties have staged a series of rallies across the region and ramped up efforts to garner support ahead of the polls. In a statement, Foreign Office (FO) Spokesperson Tahir Andarabi said India remained in “illegal occupation of the internationally recognised disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” and termed New Delhi a “global leader in propagating fake narratives and tendentious propaganda”. “We unequivocally reject this latest Indian rhetoric with the contempt it deserves,” the statement said. New Delhi, in a statement issued by its foreign ministry earlier on Friday, objected to the upcoming elections in GB, claiming that “the entire Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, including the so-called ‘Gilgit-Baltistan’, are integral and inalienable parts of India”. Reiterating Islamabad’s position, the FO said the Jammu and Kashmir dispute was the longest unresolved item on the UN Security Council agenda and originated from India’s “forcible and unlawful occupation” of the state in 1947. The only just and durable settlement, it added, lay in implementing relevant UNSC resolutions guaranteeing the Kashmiri people their “inalienable right to self-determination through a free and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices”. The statement further said that said India’s “unfounded assertions” on GB could not divert attention from “grave and systematic human rights violations” in India-occupied Kashmir. The FO elaborated that Indian forces enjoy impunity under “draconian laws” and termed it “state terrorism” against unarmed Kashmiris. Pakistan called on India to vacate all occupied territories